


circles on calendars

by missymeggins



Category: Finding Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missymeggins/pseuds/missymeggins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A history of birthdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	circles on calendars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mierke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mierke/gifts).



Their first three birthdays were completely typical. 

The first three years of their _life_ \- their _family_ \- were completely typical. They were the nuclear family with a white picket fence and the American Dream tucked under their arms. Not once did they ever imagine it would be anything different. 

But then it’s shattered in a way that leaves them all in so many pieces that they can’t even comprehend them all, let alone know where to start putting them back together. 

(The truth is, there will always be pieces missing and nothing they can do, no amount of growth and healing will be able to bring all the pieces back together. They become different pictures with overlapping corners and in time they will learn to be okay with it.)

Still, they had those first three birthdays and they all hold on to them in different ways. Except for Grant who can’t because he didn’t exist yet and it’s this uncontrollable facet of his life that leaves him feeling like an armadillo in a family of giraffes, an out of place addition to a family that only exists in the past. 

For David and Elizabeth those first three birthdays are something they can hold onto, a remnant of the life they thought they were going to have and something to give them hope; the belief that they might be able to get it back.

It’s different for Taylor; she’s not really holding on so much as she’s reaching out, wishing that she _could_ grasp it. She’s not lucky enough to really have memories. The fact of herself as a twin, as a sister, is abstract and intangible, but achingly absent nonetheless, like a phantom limb in reverse; she knows it’s there but she can’t really feel it. 

Three years of celebrations, of normality, of _family._

It’s so small compared to the next thirteen of fractures and falsehoods. 

 

 

**November 11th 1997, Age 1**

****The party is about them but not for them.

They won’t remember it, and they barely take part in it except for the ten minutes they’re allowed to shovel cake into their little mouths while family and friends watch and laugh and take photos of the adorable mess. 

There are so many photos of the party you could almost make a flip-book. Photos of the cake with the candles lit, Elizabeth blowing the candles out from between Taylor and Lyndon in their high chairs, their little hands covered in icing, their family and friends taking turns to hold the birthday girls, the piles upon piles of gifts that Taylor and Lyndon don’t really care about, their joy as they play with the wrapping paper instead. 

Those photos are pored over by Elizabeth and Taylor throughout the years at different times. 

Taylor will discover them when she’s eight and it’s something she doesn’t recognize. 

Twins are supposed to be connected but Lyndon is a shadow she can barely remember having and when she looks at the photos it’s like she’s seeing herself with two heads. She looks and looks and traces her fingers over their faces, not even sure which is hers, waiting to _feel_ something, some connection to the twin she’s supposed to be devastated she lost. 

But she doesn’t.

 

**November 11th 1998, Age 2**

****This birthday gets lost in the memories and archives. Elizabeth spends a lot of time regretting it in later years. Why didn’t she think their second birthday was just as important? Why wasn’t there a big party and photos and anecdotes to tell?

The truth is simple. You can’t make every moment significant. Life is life and sometimes things get lost amongst it. It’s easy to prioritize the first birthdays because everything is happening for the first time at that age; first words, first steps, so many first discoveries every single day and then life keeps going and the second birthday comes around and it becomes the first time that the passing of a year is a regular milestone. It’s strange the arbitrary nature of which birthdays are supposed to be _significant_. 

So their second birthday is just _their second birthday._ There’s a cake and this time it’s David who blows out the candles for them but it’s just the four of them this time and that’s okay. At the time it feels right, just family. Sometimes you need _just family._ But it’s not an affair so they don’t document it in the same way. 

Later for Elizabeth, in those early days where all she can do to try and hold herself together is to cling to every scrap of her history with them, she searches her memory for all the details of that day and comes up empty and there aren’t enough photos to help her find them. 

She can’t remember what they were wearing or what flavor the cake was or what gifts they bought them. It was just another birthday. 

The guilt that something to do with her children had ever felt like _just another_ anything eats at her. 

 

 

 **November 11th 1999, Age 3  
**  
This is the age of matching birthday outfits, something that won’t be repeated until fourteen years later. 

Much like their first birthday, there’s cake and there are photos of icing rimmed grins. There are also balloons this time. Three is the age where it becomes possible to _really_ appreciate balloons. They’re old enough now to be able to tug them by their strings, pull them down to their faces and try to bat each other with them before letting go and watching as they float back to the ceiling. 

A few of the neighborhood kids are there and they run around the house giggling and overloaded on sugar. No one will even be able to remember their names later; neighbors move, photos are lost, lives are changed. 

It’s their third and last birthday together. The fact that anyone else is there at all becomes completely irrelevant. 

Together they get to share three years of typical family birthday celebrations.

After that there’s fourteen years of distance. Fourteen years of celebrating on the wrong day, of celebration amidst grief, of celebrating worlds apart. 

 

 

 **November 11th 2001, Age 4**

“Where’s Lyndon, who’s going to open her presents?” 

It’s been five months and four year old Taylor, now their only daughter, still gets confused sometimes, waiting for her twin to come home. The passage of time is different when you’re four, not to mention reality and uncertainty. All she knows is she’s always had Lyndon and so Lyndon must come back. Why wouldn’t she? How could she not? Where could she _be_ and why don’t her mommy and daddy _know?_

(Nothing about this could ever make sense to a four year old.)

Elizabeth cries as she hands Taylor the gift wrapped in bright paper and a bow on top. It ruins the moment because birthdays are supposed to be happy and she’s been waiting for hers for weeks, wondering if she’ll get the doll she’s been begging for but her mother is weeping and she misses her sister and nothing makes sense anymore. 

She throws the gift back, stamps her feet and screams, “I want Lyndon!” 

Elizabeth cries harder and Taylor watches her daddy as he looks between them both, trying to decide who he needs to comfort and even as a four year old there’s something about that that Taylor understands so she makes the decision for him and runs to her room. 

It’s impossible to know how much time it takes because she hasn’t yet learnt how to tell it, but it feels long. Long enough for her to have thrown herself on her bed in a mess of emotions that her four year old brain is not yet equipped to handle, and cry until she’s run out of tears and is left with nothing more to do but cling to her teddy bear as she wishes there were someone to cling to her. 

Eventually daddy comes to find her. She’s no longer crying so all he says is, “Mommy’s sorry Taylor. She wants you to come open your presents now. Okay?” 

His face is full of pleading and she’s his first child so he hasn’t yet learnt – maybe he never does – that it doesn’t take children long to learn what expected responses are. 

She says, “Okay,” not because it is but because that’s what she thinks she’s supposed to do. 

Elizabeth has put on a face and she smiles at Taylor, hugging her tightly as she says, too happily, “Happy Birthday Taylor!”

This is where it starts. 

This is when their family learns to pretend that everything is okay when it’s not. 

 

 **May 5th 2002, Age 4 (real age: four and a half)**

Carter’s 4th birthday is an excessive affair, as all her birthdays are. And like, the next twelve birthdays to come, it’s a lie. 

She’s been with Lori for a year now and her four year old brain has started to adjust, accepting all of the lies as truths because it’s too hard not to. 

For the first few weeks she cried almost non-stop, confused and scared, begging for mommy and daddy in alternately ignored pleas. Over and over, Lori kept calm, hand on Carter’s shoulder and eyes leveled directly into her tear-filled gaze saying, “Carter you’re confused. I’m your mommy. I’m going to keep you safe.” 

“No no no no, I want my mommy and daddy and Taylor. Take me home, please take me home.” 

“You are home Carter. This is your home, I am your mommy and Taylor can be here whenever you want sweetie,” Lori says in a calm, matter of fact tone.

Lyndon feels her tiny heart bloom with cautious, confused hope as answers Lori. “She can?” 

“Sure sweetie. She’s your secret invisible friend right? Only you can see her, so only you know when she’s here and I know Taylor only comes out when you tell her it’s okay. So you just have to tell her it’s safe here.” 

“Taylor’s not invisible,” Lyndon says shaking her head

Lori shrugs with a little smile on her face. “If you say so Carter. But if you want her here maybe you should just call her.”

Lori leaves Lyndon alone in her room, locking the door from the outside as she always does, and that _click,_ as it always does, sends Lyndon to her bed in terrified tears. 

As she cries her sobs slowly turn into a single word. “Taylor, Taylor, Taylor.” 

In her head she hears the echo of her twin, calm and sure like she always had been whenever Lyndon scraped a knee or took a fall. “It’s okay Lyndy, I’m here. You’re okay.” 

And by the time her “fourth” birthday comes around, there are some foggy imprints of memories of a father and a mother that isn’t Lori but she doesn’t really believe them anymore. 

Taylor is still vivid in her life, the ‘imaginary friend’ that became her safe haven while she slowly let go of her old life, letting her tongue get used to saying ‘Mom’ to a woman whose face feels foreign for nearly two months. 

She remains so vivid that she receives her own birthday gifts from Lori, so that the pile is twice what it should be but Carter never needs to share them. The pile of gifts stands out in her memory for a long time, but it’s just the beginning of a tradition of birthday extravaganzas that she shares with Lori alone. 

Taylor doesn’t make it to their “fifth” birthday because by then Carter has begun meeting other children in the neighbourhood and none of them have imaginary friends so she starts pushing Taylor out of her mind and Lori plays along, the dutiful mother supporting her child in ‘growing out of her imaginary friend.’ 

But on that first false birthday, Carter celebrates the milestone with Taylor in her own way. 

 

 

**November 11th 2002, Age 5**

****Lyndon has started to fade from her now. Taylor is a big girl, a smart girl. She knows because everyone tells her. And the ghost of Lyndon fades from her memory, if not everyone else’s.

It fades because her presence starts to fade from the house, and though no one could suggest for a second that they’ve _moved on,_ Lyndon’s disappearance doesn’t occupy the house anymore. The photos have been taken from the walls and the shelves, quietly replaced with the reality of their family now: still photos of four but baby Grant has taken Lyndon’s place and he shapes their new normality. 

What Taylor won’t understand until she’s older is that the shadow of Lyndon’s disappearance may have moved out of the house but it hasn’t moved out of her mother, or her father, it’s just that they keep it somewhere else now. 

Her father keeps it in the words he pours into his book, and her mother pours it into her new career as a policewoman. 

Taylor remembers her fifth birthday being _full_ and yet so empty in a way that she doesn’t understand until she’s much older. 

They buy her a new party dress, and her cake is covered in flowers made from frosting and every single child in her class is there but the celebration is so _big,_ so _loud_ that it feels like everything is happening _around_ her and not really to her. Elizabeth is so busy hosting that Taylor barely sees her and the only person in her class that really talks to her is Gabe and it doesn’t really feel like enough. 

She feels terribly alone. 

As she falls asleep that night, she finds herself thinking “Happy Birthday Lyndon,” but by morning she’s forgotten again and Lyndon doesn’t really cross her mind again for another couple of years.

 

 

 **November 11th 2005, Age 8**

Lyndon can’t stay faded in her memory forever. At almost eight she begins to creep back into Taylor’s life in vivid color whether she wants it or not. 

Taylor starts digging through things hidden in closets, like all bored and curious kids do when the weather keeps them inside, and is surprised when she finds two dusty photo albums filled with photos of _two_. Two baby girls growing into two toddlers with enough matching outfits and matching smiles to make her pay attention and eventually it becomes time to ask the questions. 

Because it’s not that she’s _forgotten_ forgotten, there are still vague memories scattered here and there, but six, seven and even eight year olds don’t often bother to question the realities of their life or the odd fragmented memories that don’t quite match what they know.

There comes a time though when your life stops just _being your life_ and becomes something more existential, something with a timeline and a narrative and a history that you want to know and understand and make sense of.

So she confronts mom and dad with the albums and demands answers. 

This is when the shadow of Lyndon’s disappearance moves back into Taylor’s life and by the time her 8th birthday comes around, it’s not just a celebration for her anymore. 

Lyndon’s name is threaded all throughout that day and from then on her birthday, the very celebration of her _birth_ , her _life_ , and her _existence_ instead becomes the symbol of Lyndon’s absence. It wracks her with guilt in the most irrational way - because Taylor gets to be _here_ and Lyndon is just _gone._  
 _  
_(Sometimes she feels guilty that it wasn’t her who was kidnapped. She tries to tell herself that it wouldn’t be any different; if her parents had lost her their loss would be just the same. But it’s hard to really believe that when she’s lived through their grief over the loss of Lyndon.)

She spends the next eight birthdays regretting she ever asked to know about it.

Because once they start talking about Lyndon again, she stops being a mere shadow and becomes a blinding eclipse. 

In a way she thinks it’s her fault that Grant feels like an armadillo. She wonders if they would ever have told him if not for her discovery of the photo albums. 

It’s really not fair on him at all.

 

 **May 2nd 2008, Age 6  
**  
The irony of Grant’s birth is that it’s mere days before the anniversary of Lyndon’s kidnapping. 

Grant doesn’t learn about Lyndon the same time Taylor does. He’s too busy being five to listen to the serious conversations they have in the living room as they pore over boring old photos. 

He’s _five_ ; he’s got stuff to do. 

But it’s inevitable really because after Taylor learns the truth, everything shifts and suddenly mom wants to _talk_ about her again. She’s consumed by Lyndon and her grief becomes public again. 

Which is how Taylor finds her on the morning of Grant’s sixth birthday, teary eyed at the breakfast table, murmuring to David, “Can you believe it’s nearly been seven years?”

“God mom can you not be sad about Lyndon on Grant’s birthday?” Taylor says a little too forcefully.

“Who’s Lyndon?” Grant’s voice catches them by surprise as he enters the kitchen in search of his birthday breakfast. 

“No one,” Taylor says quickly before giving him a huge squeeze (the kind only a big sister can give a little brother and only a little brother can pretend to hate but secretly love) as she says, “Happy Birthday!” 

“Whoa, Taylor,” Elizabeth says quickly. “Maybe it’s time we told Grant. I think he’s old enough now, right David?” 

“Mom!” Taylor glares at her and tries to keep her voice low. “It’s his birthday! Can you at least leave it for another day?”

But it’s too late, Grant’s curiosity has been aroused and not even Taylor’s attempts to distract him with the offer to cook him birthday chocolate chip pancakes is enough to make him let go. 

So this is how Grant’s sixth birthday becomes a family conference about how he used to have another older sister named Lyndon. 

He doesn’t develop the sarcasm to call himself ‘the replacement child’ until two years later but the idea is born into his mind that day before he even gets to open his presents. 

 

 **May 5th, 2011, Ten Years On**

There are no balloons or cakes for this occasion. The closest thing there is to singing is Elizabeth’s shaky sobs; they have their own, almost musical, lilt to them.

Taylor and Grant _hate_ this day. 

Neither one of them knows how to interpret what their parents feel about this day. The truth is, they don’t feel like they really belong in it. 

This day isn’t for them. They simply endure it together, their own little unit. 

This day is always: Taylor and Grant. David and Elizabeth. 

And Lyndon right there in the middle of them, the ghost that never really leaves. 

 

 **November 11th 2014, Age 17  
**  
They celebrate their seventeenth birthday together but it’s a jump in time for Carter, who only just celebrated turning sixteen a few months ago and it’s chaos for Taylor who doesn’t know how to share this milestone with the twin she barely knows but has felt overshadowed by for the latter half of her life. 

They aren’t really a family yet. Carter still thinks of her kidnapper as ‘mom’ and _mom_ as Elizabeth and there’s no certainty at all to what her future will look like. 

What does become clear is that _seventeen_ looks an awful lot like _three_ with Taylor and Carter in their matching dresses with matching grins. 

It’s the first time either of them feel any kind of connection to the life they shared before all this distance. 

The photo they take together, in their matching dresses, gets added to that dusty old album of _two_ and they add to it from there. 

 

 **November 11th 2015, Age 18  
**  
Eighteen is the first birthday since they were three that they celebrate on the same day, _knowingly_ and intentionally. 

Carter knows it’s coming this time and Taylor’s actually looking forward to it. 

It’s the first time they celebrate a birthday as _five_. And more importantly, it’s the first birthday they spend together where each of them has _chosen_ to embrace this family for what it is. 

Messy and recovering and starting _anew._

Together. 

__

 

( **May 5th –**

 ****This day? This day no longer features on their calendars. They decide not to give it anymore meaning.)


End file.
